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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#151

Post by dsego »

Tichy wrote: post #143
dsego wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The multiplication table really bothers me. It's considered to be the least a child can learn in elementary school. And kids that haven't learned to do math mentally just memorise it like a poem. I really don't think this is the correct approach.

I feel a bit bad for not memorizing it, to be honest. Not sure if there is any other way for learning to multiply? How do you "understand" that 6x 8 = 48? With bigger numbers, then you can apply a system. And as I mentioned I also "cheated" a bit with the basic table. For example I would have remembered that 5 x 8 = 40 and then calculated 6 x 8 = 5 x 8 + 6 in my head, because the multiplications for 5 are easy (half…

You can learn to better comprehend a quantity or amount. So you understand that 6 * 8 is larger than 2 * 8, and then understand that it is actually 3 times that. Another approach would be to always think of multiplication as condensed summation, so 6 * 8 = 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 = (8+8) + (8+8) + (8+8) = 32 + 16 = 48. I would let my kid write out the summation and apply an analytical approach rather than memorising it blindly. I guess you have to memorise it eventually, but a lot of kids are lost if they fail to recollect the answer.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#152

Post by VBprogrammer »

tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

  * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this year (for the first time) and it's working better than I thought it would. Another rule we have: complete or not, homework is done at 9:30PM.
The parent doesn't say, but its entirely possible that his daughter has non-academic hobbies. Perhaps she competes in a sport, dances or feeds the homeless. In-fact, wouldn't it be more negligent to deny her the opportunity to take part in those non-academic activities?

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#153

Post by raverbashing »

dsego wrote: post #126
neltnerb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good part of the problem is that we learn to multiply and divide backwards. The standard US algorithm involves starting at the least significant digit and working your way up. It is much easier to do in your head if you do it from the most significant digit down. Or learn to convert hard multiplications into easy ones, for instance: 9x27 = 10x27-27 = 243 The other way to do this would be to multiply 9x7 to…

Why isn't this type of mental calculation actually taught at schools? Not every kid thinks of these "tricks". Instead, they do how the teacher showed them and do it on paper the long way. Seems like we are crippling our kids.

Because the teacher a) can't b) don't care and c) shuns those who point their ignorance

Yes, the way of speeding these calculations is to break it in easy steps (which might involve some simple calculations themselves)

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#154

Post by GotAnyMegadeth »

madaxe wrote: post #121
girvo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh gosh, I would have been absolutely ropeable if the principal had accused me of "cyber-bullying" in that manner. That is entirely, utterly, disgustingly bullshit. And it doesn't surprise me. Surely it's the bias that is put forward by news media, but the stories that I hear of the American education system scares the shit out of me -- and I went to school in Queensland (which is terrible in and of itself)! Zero-tol…

I had the benefit of attending the British, German, and American school systems. Schooling in America has little to do with education, and much to do with indoctrination. Pretty much the only thing I learned was the pledge of allegiance - over which I repeatedly got suspended, as I refused to recite it along with the rest of the class, every morning. Everything else they "taught" was years behind what I'd been learni…

You had to recite a pledge of allegiance? Wow. Sounds like North Korea.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#155

Post by mcintyre1994 »

tptacek wrote: post #124
GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #120

The Author and his daughter haven't learnt the tricks of the trade. I was set 3+hrs of HW a day, but I certainly didn't do that much. First, they need to assess which teachers "Don't mind" if you don't do the homework. This could mean they stand you up in front of the whole class and shout at you, but if they don't give you an after school detention, don't do it. Getting in the teachers good books previously helps wi…

How caustic a lesson to teach your kid, that they should organize to cheat on homework, so they can artificially inflate their grade. I suppose it does set them up for a productive life of investment banking.

You're obviously right (although I think a lot of us figured these without parents helping us), but "memorization,not rationalization" isn't much better.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#156

Post by jtheory »

tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

> Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon

That's a bit unfair -- that was Friday afternoon only.

I don't have any kids in school yet, and I'm not in the US anymore anyway; but I do remember from my HS experience it would have been unkind to force me to complete all homework before any entertainment. School ended at 2:15 (because it started at 7am... ugh), but that's when after school activities started -- and who could have a decent college app without extracurriculars? I worked on the literary magazine, ran track/cross-country, was in a few plays/musicals, and got home either at 4:30 (early bus) or a bit before 6pm (late bus), usually the latter. In theory I could sometimes get some work done during the school day, but when would I hang out with friends, then?

I agree about limits on homework time, and entertainment time; but I think I'd be inclined to make sure they had both downtime and homework time, and if the homework couldn't be completed, so be it.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#157

Post by 6d0debc071 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30

So much whining. These tasks represent actual problems you might be tasked with finding out in the real world; not all of them are directly relevant to students or their utility immediately apparent, but the mothodologies are solid. Growing up in Ireland and going to high school int he 80s, I was doing 3-4 hours/night of homework from the equivalent of your grade 7, and I still found time to watch TV and read for ple…

> I laughed out loud at the author's complaint that math homework involved doing a lot of calculation without the aid of a calculator. Well yes, that is how you develop math feel.

IIRC historically, mathematical algorithms used to be encoded as a handful of steps, so that people could do them on abacuses and the like without understanding what they were using.

Just sitting there crunching numbers by hand won't give you a feeling for maths. - Or the ability to approximate well, which is the real thing. That's a selection of tricks to do with multiplication and division that'll get you into the right ballpark.

That's something that can be encoded and taught as its own skill, spending ages doing things by hand in the hope that people will hit on that skill for themselves ain't it.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#159

Post by lgieron »

rorrr2 wrote: post #150
tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

I never understood how the knowledge of the capitals of states or countries is useful in any way. It's meaningless. It can be easily looked up, if you need that information. I can't even imagine a practical scenario when one would need to know it.

It's hard to function in the world without some rudimentary knowledge of it. As for practical scenario, imagine your boss wants to send you to a conference in Paris, and you answer back with "Where?".

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#160

Post by ronaldx »

Tichy wrote: post #142
ronaldx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A current-generation Casio scientific handles this well - the display shows exact numbers such as 1+√(2) which suggest it's doing the precise calculation where reasonable.

The problem is that something like sqrt(2) can not be represented as a number in a calculator. So as long as the calculator only operates with numbers, instead of doing algebra, it will do it wrong. In the case of sqrt(2) x sqrt(2), most calculators will convert sqrt(2) to an approximation of sqrt(2), then multiply those approximations. If you are lucky the result will be rounded to 2, but you will not always be luck…

No, I don't believe you are correct: a calculator can represent sqrt(2) as sqrt(2), just the same as we can on paper (perhaps you are calling this an algebraic representation).

In fact, I'm confident that Casio - probably the market leader in scientific calculators - is doing exactly this, storing the exact number.

Casio does not appear to approximate simple surds as floats until it becomes necessary, and stores the exact number sqrt(2), just as it stores exact representations of rational numbers wherever reasonable (and, it correctly distinguishes whether it knows a number exactly or only as a float - it refuses to convert inexact floats into fractions, but will convert exact numbers).

Calculator phone apps don't compete at this level - which is surprising, I would have thought smartphones would have put calculators against the wall.

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